SEVERAL years ago, a Presbyterian
minister I know challenged his congregation to open its doors and its heart more
fully to the poor. The congregation initially responded with enthusiasm and a
number of programmes were introduced that actively invited people from the
less-privileged economic areas of the city, including a number of street people,
to come their church.

But the romance soon died as coffee cups
and other loose items began to disappear, some handbags were stolen, and the
church and meeting space were often left messy and soiled.

A number of the congregation began to
complain and demand an end to the experiment: "This isn't what we expected! Our
church isn't clean and safe anymore! We wanted to reach out to these people and
this is what we get! This is too messy to continue!"

But the minister held his ground,
pointing out that their expectations were naive, that what they were
experiencing was precisely part of the cost of reaching out to the poor, and
that Jesus assures us that loving is unsafe and messy, not just in reaching
out to the poor but in reaching out to anyone.

We like to think of ourselves as gracious
and loving, but, the truth be told, that is predicated on an overly-naive and
overly-romanticised notion of love.

We don't really love as Jesus invites us
to when He says: Love each other as I have loved you! The tail-end of that
sentence contains the challenge: Jesus doesn't say, love each other according
to the spontaneous movements of your heart; nor, love each other as society
defines love, but rather: Love each other as I have loved you!

And, for the most part, we haven't done
that:

We haven't
loved our enemies, nor turned the other cheek and reached out to embrace
those who hate us. We haven't prayed for those who oppose us.

We haven't
forgiven those who hurt us, nor forgiven those who have murdered our loved
ones. We haven't, in the midst of being hurt, asked God to forgive the very
people who are hurting us because they are not really cognizant of what they
are doing.

We haven't been
big-hearted and taken the high road when we've been slighted or ignored, nor
at those times have we let understanding and empathy replace bitterness and
our desire to withdraw. We haven't let go of our grudges.

We haven't let
ourselves be vulnerable to the point of risking humiliation and rejection in
our offers of love. We haven't given up our fear of being misunderstood, of
not looking good, of not appearing strong and in control. We haven't set out
barefooted, to love without security in our pockets.

We haven't
opened our hearts enough to imitate Jesus' universal, non-discriminating
embrace, nor have we been able to stretch our hearts to see everyone as
brother or sister, regardless of race, colour, or religion. We haven't
stopped nursing the silent secret that our own lives and the lives of our
loved ones are more precious than those of the rest of the world.

We haven't made
a preferential option for the poor, haven't brought the poor to our tables,
and haven't yet abandoned our propensity to be with the attractive and the
influential.

We haven't
sacrificed ourselves fully to the point of losing everything for the sake of
others. We haven't ever really laid down our lives for our friends - nor,
especially, for our enemies. We haven't been willing to die for the very
people who oppose us and are trying to crucify us.

We haven't
walked in patience, giving others the full space they need to relate to us
according to their own inner dictates. We haven't been willing to patiently
sweat blood in order to be faithful. We haven't waited in patience, in God's
good time, for God's judgment on right and wrong.

We haven't
resisted our natural urge to judge others, to not impute motives. We haven't
left judgment to God.

Finally, not
least, we haven't loved and forgiven ourselves, knowing that no mistake we
make stands between us and God. We haven't trusted God's love enough to
always begin anew inside of God's infinite mercy.

We haven't loved as Jesus loved.

After his wife, Raissa, died, French
Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain edited a book of her journals. In the
Preface, he describes her struggle with the illness that eventually killed her.
Severely debilitated and unable to speak, she struggled mightily in her last
days.

Her suffering both tested and matured
Maritain's own faith. Mightily sobered by seeing his wife's sufferings, he
wrote: Only two kinds of people think that love is easy: saints, who through
long years of self-sacrifice have made a habit of virtue, and naive persons who
don't know what they're talking about.